


Skin

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:35:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1631834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was strange and a stranger, but between accepting his help and stabbing myself in the face with my shoe, I figured he was the best bet to take. I was so, so wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skin

**Author's Note:**

> I just realized after I wrote this that it isn't a very feminist text. *facepalm* But it is a modern retelling, so there's that at least. 
> 
> Written for Aradiachiba

 

 

**Skin**

It was my first job out of law school, and I wanted to impress my boss. Partly because I knew they were weeding all the new hires out, partly because my boss was (is) hot. So when my hot boss dropped a pile of dossiers onto my desk with this smug smirk twisting his lips and told me I would need to have them all fact-checked, researched, and cross-referenced - not to mention have the précis written - by the next morning, I wanted to cry. Give up and just cry. But giving up and crying hadn't gotten me into the top five percent of my graduating class, so I didn't. I slipped off my Jimmy Choos (scavenged slightly scuffed from a thrift shop, a great find for all they pinched like hell and were murder to walk in) and turned the lamplight to a higher luminescence and worked. I worked HARD. I didn't go home, or even move away from the desk for a snack or a drink, didn't even take a walk to stretch my legs. Maybe I should have - maybe if I'd done something to keep myself alert, I wouldn't have fallen asleep on top of an open file. Maybe I wouldn't have drooled all over it, either. 

I swear I had closed my eyes for just a blink. Just a blink, a longer than average one, maybe, at two in the morning. I opened them again at five. The work day started at six. I was so screwed - so, so screwed - I was going to be fired and then no other law firm would touch me and I would never be able to pay off all of those student loans - I was going to be in debt FOREVER - _my boss was going to think I was an idiot_. I felt like stabbing myself in the face with the heel of one of my Choos; at least that pain would be kinder than the mental anguish ripping up my gut. 

That was when he showed up. Or maybe he'd been there earlier, staring at me as I slept (creepy!), and only spoke up when he saw me freaking out. 

He was a funny looking man, all wrong angles and weird joints, his face disconcerting like someone had smashed together three separate faces into one. His eyebrows, for example, did not match. The right was thicker than the left, the left had more of an arch, it looked like it was always raised. He had a giant's hands, but a sixteen year old's forearms, a barrel chest but a thin neck. He was wearing a three piece suit that had to have been tailored for it to have fit his odd body. 

He said, "What's wrong?" and I said, "I'm going to kill myself with my shoes," and he said, "I thought all women did that gladly in the name of fashion."

The offices were deserted except for us. He was standing, I was sitting, my hair was in disarray and there was drool drying on my chin. "Who are you?" I asked. 

"Who do you think I am?" he smiled. 

He looked like a partner, but he could have just been rich enough on his own to afford that three thousand dollar suit. (Probably more with tailoring. Probably something like five thousand. Rich misshapen bastard.)

"Whatever," I said. "I can't be bantering right now, I need to -" I gestured vaguely at the files. Three quarters had been completed, but that last quarter loomed, as did the yet-to-be-written précis. 

He winced. "Anders gave you until morning to do all that, didn't he." It wasn't a question. Anders Chistofferson was my hot boss. My hot smirking boss. My hot, out to get me, smirking boss. I moaned. 

"Yes, and morning is almost here, and I am _screwed_ , which is why I'm going to _stab myself in the eye with my shoe_. It'll make the news: Lawyer found in bizarre sartorial death. The morning secretaries will discover my still-warm corpse as they make the first pot of coffee. I will become an urban legend."

He laughed, this chuckling donkey sound, and said, "We can't have that. It would reflect badly on the firm." He looked me up and down appraisingly, then said, "Maybe you should clean yourself up. Make yourself presentable." I gestured feebly at the unfinished work and he said, briskly, "I'll take care of that for you."

"But -" I protested. "I don't even know who you are."

He grinned and it was friendly, but not. He grinned and it was a threat. "Think of me as someone who just wants to help," he suggested.

Normally I wouldn't trust someone who `just wants to help', but he _was_ wearing a three-or-five thousand dollar suit which meant he was probably a partner, which meant he probably knew what he was doing, and if he even thought of getting me to repay him with sexual favours I would be able to slap a lawsuit on him and the firm so fast heads would spin until they fell off. I was a good enough lawyer to know I would get a decent settlement, too, enough to pay off those debts I mentioned. There was really no bad here. So I said, grateful, _"Thank you,"_ and tried not to feel uneasy when he shrugged faux modestly. 

"No problem," he said. "Maybe one day you'll repay me with your firstborn." 

"Haha," I laughed, though he hadn't said it like a joke. "Sure. Right. I'll do just that." His eyes gleamed. In satisfaction? Maybe. That's what it looked like. I stood and slipped on the shoes I'd be contemplating suicide with just minutes earlier, grabbed my bag and trotted off to the bathrooms to freshen up. Behind me he slid behind my desk and finished my work for me. By the time I got back from the washroom - twenty minutes later, having washed my face, rinsed my mouth, combed my hair, reapplied my makeup, swapped out my blouse for a spare I had had stashed in my desk (this wasn't the first all nighter I'd been forced to pull at the firm) - the stranger had gone and in his place was a neat stack of files and notes and a five-paged précis that I skimmed through briefly and was damn impressed by. 

I had enough time to brew coffee and down a mug or three by the time my hot smirking bastard of a boss sauntered into the office. He looked surprised to see me, surprised to see the work he'd given me done, surprised, surprised. Then pleased. Then considering. Then - he said, "There's hope for you yet," and his voice was as smoky as his eyes when they looked at me. It might have been the sleep deprivation talking, but I would totally have let him bend me over my desk, and I wouldn't even have bothered with that lawsuit after, either. 

Five months after that, I was dating my hot smirking boss. A surprise to no one, I'm sure. Seven months after we started dating, we were engaged; another year, and married. It took that long to plan the monster wedding. 

I was happy, I guess, though Anders hadn't helped at all with the planning and when I'd complained to him about having to call caterers and bands and florists on top of having to prepare witnesses and cross examinations and opening and closing statements, he'd suggested I take a sabbatical from work - which led to our first big fight as an engaged couple - which ended with me taking that sabbatical. I felt like a failure as a modern woman.

It wasn't quite worth all the hassle to have the monster wedding, the cake taller than me and the giant hall for the reception, but it was a pretty good day all told. I didn't tear up like I had been afraid I would. 

I saw him at the reception, toward the end of the night, in another tailored three piece suit to fit his twisted body, his body standing still amidst a swirl of dancers. I was sitting at the head table with Anders taking a breather (it's heavy dancing in a wedding dress!) when I saw him. He had a champagne flute in his huge paw of a hand and he raised it to me in salute. His face was a grimace of a smile and he mouthed `Congratulations'. I elbowed Anders and hissed, "Who is that guy?"

"Hm?" Anders looked up from his schmooze session with some sleazy client. "What guy?"

I went to point out the stranger who had helped me over two years ago, but he had disappeared. I frowned and shrugged and said, "Never mind." Anders never minded. 

For some reason right then I thought this thought - _I promised that guy my firstborn._ I shivered, but it wasn't because I was cold, and it wasn't out of fear. I don't know what I was feeling. No, that's a lie, that's me refusing to own up to myself. What I was feeling was this:

Anticipation.

:::

I got pregnant six months after the wedding, when the marriage was already on the rocks. I don't know how I got pregnant. I mean, obviously I know the mechanical details of how - I was an active participant in that part, after all - but I was also an active participant in sliding the condom on my bastard husband's dick, and I was also an active participant in taking a pill every morning to keep pregnancies like this one from happening. I was too young to be pregnant, not yet established in my field, without a solid career to support me. 

"Babe," Anders said. "You don't need a career to support you. I'm doing that." 

I shot him a withering look. He liked that I was smart and that I could get the job done, but he didn't like it when I did those jobs. He liked that I was smart as long as I wasn't as smart (or, God forbid, smarter) than him. 

I could have had an abortion but I didn't. I had a baby instead. And she was beautiful. 

All moms say that, I guess, but I'm not the most maternal person and I'm not particularly soft and squishy toward babies. But Grace really was beautiful, perfectly proportioned, her small body a study in symmetry, her face peaceful and smooth and cherubic. She had long lovely lashes bracketing her large lovely eyes. I looked at her and didn't see myself, I didn't see Anders, instead I saw God. I saw joy. I saw something worth nine months of backaches and swollen ankles and hormonal shifts, I saw someone worth fifteen hours of unrelenting pain (and five more hours of blissed out medicated haziness when I finally kicked Anders out of my hospital room and told the doctor that to hell with the `natural birth' my husband wanted, I was getting the epidural). 

Anders seemed to agree with me, too, because he was always cooing over her, always singing to her and holding her and being fatherly. Weird, but - hot. In a paternal way. Which isn't to say I have Daddy issues. Just - it's hot when a guy holds his kid, right? Especially when his kid is your kid, too. 

So for maybe a month we were all `happy family'; then, Grace disappeared. Just. Gone. I thought at first someone had kidnapped her and I freaked to Anders, burst into snotty tears all over him and wailed, "Oh, god, where is she? Who took my Grace?"

Anders blinked at me and said, "Huh? Grace?" He frowned, then grinned suddenly and dropped his voice to that particular pitch he used when he wanted to tease: "No one took your grace, honey, you're still as graceful as ever."

I stared at him in horror. He didn't remember. He didn't remember her, he didn't remember his own daughter, he - 

"Oh god, I feel sick," I groaned. Then I was. All over his shirt and tie and shoes. 

"Oh, gross," Anders said and squinted at me. "Is this some kind of woman thing? Are you pregnant?"

This was quite possibly the last straw. I stormed out. 

:::

I stormed out of Anders' house (it was never mine, always his, because "I'm the one paying the mortgage here.") and stormed into the firm's foyer and stormed up to the first secretary I saw and jabbed my finger at her. "You," I said. "Give me a list of every partner this place has. Now." I had puke breath and red eyes and a running nose, but I also had a voice that forbade arguing and inspired fear. I had that list of every partner, not quite `now' but `very quickly', which was good enough I supposed. Unfortunately that did me no good when said list didn't come with photographs attached. I ripped it to shreds in frustration, then had a fit of shredder's remorse and got the same cowed secretary to print me out another copy and "While you're at it, hunt down headshots of every partner too."

"Headshots?" the poor secretary repeated. 

I tapped my Jimmy Choo impatiently. This was no Choo bought in a thrift store. This was a Choo bought direct from the man himself. This was a Choo with Authority. This was a Choo I would use to stab _other people_ rather than myself, and didn't they know it. Didn't they fear it. "Yes," I said. "Headshots."

"As in - _shots to the head?"_

What? I thought incredulously. "What?" I said, incredulously. "NO. As in, photographs of their heads. Jesus."

When she crossed herself at my casual taking-in-vain-of-His-name, I knew it was time to maybe back away, so I did. Not before barking out, "Headshots! Now!" 

I knew that the stranger who had helped me years ago had taken my Grace. I knew I had to find him to take her back. Forcefully, if I had to. Forcefully, like I wanted to. 

:::

Only life never works out that way. I had the list, I had the headshots, I had the cowed secretary following me around like a duckling ready to take my every order and submit to my every request. I didn't have the stranger. I didn't have my daughter. 

I wanted to cry. But crying was giving up and giving up meant giving up _Grace,_ and that wasn't something I could ever do. 

Days passed and I went crazy searching. I went office to office, knocking on doors in search of the stranger with my baby. I forgot to eat, I didn't want to sleep, I didn't shower or change clothes or brush my teeth. I was a mess. Anders tried to negotiate with me, tried to take me to a mental hospital or something ("It's a care facility, babe, not a `mental' hospital. Come on, this is the best thing for you."), but I pushed him away and eventually he stopped trying and just looked at me like I was breaking his heart. Puh-leeze. Any guy who could forget about his own child doesn't have a heart. He brought me papers to sign on the sixth day: divorce ones, which I wasn't stupid enough to sign without having read them over first, after teetering on the edge of exhaustion. I shoved the papers at him and screamed at him and broke down, hysterical, weeping. 

Anders gaped. The new hires gaped. The partners - didn't gape, they were too polished for that, they saw me in my state of mental collapse and politely did not comment but instead reversed direction. My cowed secretary was the one to step forward and pick me up. She murmured to me, "Come on, Ma'am. You're not getting anything done with this."

She was right. She was right. I had cried. Crying meant giving up. Giving up meant - 

Giving up meant giving up _Grace._ That wasn't something I could ever do. Which meant I had to stop crying. I had to stop crying, I had to _stop._

So - I did. 

And that was when I saw _him_. In the back of the crowd of gawkers staring at me, there he was, something like heartbreak in his eyes. I howled and broke free of the secretary's grasp and leapt at him. I broke through the crowd to reach him, I made my hands into claws and raked at his face. 

_"Give me back my baby,"_ I screamed. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to shove my fist down his throat and make him choke on it, but he fought me back effortlessly and held me immobile. He chuckled low and sad and said, "You promised me, though. Firstborn. You said you'd give her to me, so I took her."

She had been gone for _days_ , he'd had her for days, I wanted to throw up and scream all at once. "Give her _back_ to me," I said. "Take anything else you want. Just give her _back_."

He looked so sad, he looked so very sad, when he said, "You should have learned by now not to make such blind promises." He hesitated. His hands holding me motionless were large and capable, calloused like you wouldn't expect from a man wearing a suit like the one he wore. He said, "I can give you a challenge. In the old ways. If you win the challenge, you win your child, and go free with God. If you lose, you lose your motherhood forever." I gaped at him. What did that even _mean_? But it didn't matter. I nodded yes, and he looked even sadder, if that were possible. "The challenge is you tell me my name. You have three nights to say it. On the third night, you forfeit."

Then he was gone, suddenly, magically, and I was alone in the middle of a gaping, puzzled crowd who didn't understand what had happened anymore than I did. 

I had three nights. Three, to win back Grace. 

:::

He came the first night to my office door. I'd been on sabbatical for so long I was surprised I still had an office, but there it was. "Do you know my name?"

I didn't. I'd gone insane looking for it, questioning every person who had seen me attacking the stranger if they knew him, or of him, or if they knew someone who knew someone who knew him. _Anything_. Nothing. 

I glared at him and shook my head, and he looked at me solemnly and disappeared. 

:::

The second night I was curled up at my secretary's desk. The whole day I had been sobbing out frustration, snot and tears slicking my face, my hair tangled. I smelled strongly of sweat. I disgusted myself. My secretary soothed me, patted my filthy matted hair; my assistant was worth her weight in gold. 

He showed up before us, and I snarled, before he could get even one word out I screamed, "FUCK YOU." 

The air went silent. So silent no one was even breathing. Suddenly he smiled, a crinkle of his face and eyes, and I wanted to dig those eyes out and turn those crinkles to scars, and he said, in the midst of my misting rage, "That's not my name. Take another guess." He stared at me, meaningfully, like he was trying to hint something with his words. _Take another guess._

It couldn't be that easy - it couldn't - but - maybe, it was. "Adam," I said, and he shook his head, and like a dam broke loose names spilled out of my lips, every possible name I could think of, all with his head shaking, but I went on. At some point my secretary turned on her computer and looked up a baby name listing online, and I read out loud off of that. I read until my throat was raw and it wasn't night, but dawn. And the stranger who had my child shook his head one last time and said, "I'm sorry," then disappeared. 

:::

That third day I finally slept an hour, though that an hour felt like I was betraying my daughter; when I woke, I felt new. When I woke, my secretary - who I was vowing to give a pay-raise, a car, a _house_ \- had reams of papers printed for me, all of names. Obscure names, names in other languages, names names names. 

"You can do this," she said, and I believed her. I had my Choos. 

The third night I was ready for him. Before he had even opened his mouth to say something I launched into my list. I spoke fast, sing-song rhythm to keep my voice going; I had water bottles at hand that my secretary passed over every time my mouth got dry; my lips chapped and began to bleed, my tongue felt numb, dumb, heavy, but I kept on naming him. Again, again, again. 

Night was fading, dawn was breaking, and I started to sob. Tears in my throat, I spoke them out loud. I couldn't stop myself from crying because my last chance was being taken away - was being taken from me - time wouldn't stand still, I couldn't hold it in my hands and keep it from going forward. 

He opened his mouth, and I knew he was going to say _I'm sorry_ , and then disappear. And I would never hold Grace again. I knew that was what was going to happen, and I broke down sobbing. I broke down sobbing and fell to my knees and crawled to his feet and clutched at him. "Please," I said. "Please. Pleasepleaseplease _please_ please." I had no pride left. I had only the blood of my lips and the tears of my eyes, I had only my voice hoarse and cracking, " _Please_."

He leaned down and picked me up, his hands large and kind. His face was uncommonly serious. His skin was warm, his skin was human, his skin was touching my skin. He leaned forward, and his face contorted with pain as he said, "My name is -" he choked. Like his tongue was too big for his mouth. He coughed, and tried again, "My name is -" and this time he turned blue and swayed, just slightly, on his feet. 

I realized, then, that he was in no more control of this than I was, that whatever force propelled him he couldn't evade. We were both fate's bitch. 

Urgently, I said, "Could I go with you? With you and Grace?" and his eyes widened, voiceless he nodded, nameless and dear. I leaned forward and into his ear I whispered my name. 

 


End file.
